#casethar

[therunawayscamp]

home.

We all come home to different things, I wrote once, and I said that I came home to two smiles waiting.

There were fewer smiles than there used to be when I wrote that. Hazil's illness was getting worse and we didn't have a lot to smile about. It's why I began writing this manuscript. I want to travel the world like you, Hazil said, I want to meet the people you meet and see the sights you see but I'll never be able to, so I said if I couldn't do anything else then I would try and bring my world to him through these stories. Silly things. But they made him smile.

I came home to something very different after our last voyage. Not even Casethar waiting for me on the sea wall, and when I came home

when I came home

it was so quiet. Our little house. Sunshine filled the garden, autumn, late afternoon, sun on the bench which Sham helped Ethysil build so Hazil could sit outside. Cold inside, except for the sick room, which we never could keep as cool as Hazil wanted it.

That's where they were. In the sick room.  Casethar dragged me through the door and dropped me down beside the bed so I could see him and he could see me and everything went cold and grey, then hot and... a curious shade of orange, and then

He wasn't dead, but he was dying. I think he said my name. His lips were so dry it was hard to tell, but I kissed them anyway and held his hand and promised him I wouldn't leave and

Which brings me to what we knew was going to happen, really, from the moment we met him.

What do I say? What am I supposed to say?

I'll write it down, I said, but every time I think I'm ready to talk about it my hands start to shake and the ink goes everywhere and the parchment ends up too damp to write on. I can't light this damned hackle-lo without getting ash all over the desk. I want to go back. I want him back. I want to write him back into existence and I can't, I fucking can't.

The week after it happened is all in bits. I remember lying there holding his hand for hours (it was cold. It was so cold). I remember looking up and finding he was gone, because I'd fallen asleep and Casethar moved me into our bedroom. I remember staring at a bookcase when R'khan arrived to offer his condolences, but I don't remember saying anything. I remember my hands being too numb to fasten my sash on the morning of the funeral. I remember Casethar's hug hurting as he pushed his jaw against my head, pulled the bones of my shoulders into his chest. I remember a lot of hot soreness in my eyes, my chest, everywhere. I don't remember drinking but there are a lot of empty bottles around here and my head hurts so I think that happened too.

After all these fragmented images appeared and faded I was at the funeral. It was a nice evening. Warm air, purple sky. Dartwings in the firelight. The sort of evening we would have walked up the hill together. Ethysil said a few words and then so did everybody else. I had the violin, the painted one R'khan gave me on my wedding day, the one which sounded so beautiful it would have brought Lord Seht to tears, and I think they expected me to play it. I threw it on the pyre instead because how the fuck was I supposed to play in that situation? How do I ever play again?

And then I came back to a place which didn't feel like home any more, locked myself in here and picked up the quill. Now I know what it's like to lift a feather and find your energy drained. I know how he felt.

I can't go to sea again. I'm not sure I can go outside again, so my history of the Scamps ends here. I wish them well, whatever they find on the horizon, and thank them for all we did together.

I can't write any more, Hazil. I'm sorry.

.

.

.

Epilogue

'How is he?'

'Bad.'

'Can I talk to him? I think I can help.'

'You can try, but he won't listen. He doesn't want to hear any of it.'

'He might want to hear this.'

Vilayn stabbed at the parchment with the quill, blotting the page and upsetting the vase of stoneflower stalks. Before the water splashed onto the manuscript he swept it aside, letting every word fall to the floor, and picked up a new sheet to write on. His hand jerked angrily across the page.

fucking priests and their fucking bloody thrice damned words oh I'm sorry how awful how sad let me know if there's anything I can do think about all the good things he's safe now he's with the gods now isn't that lovely isn't that so fucking nice for them fuck that make them give him back he isn't theirs he's ours I want him back I want him back I want him back why can't any of them fucking do anything

There was a knock on the door. The nib of the quill ripped through the paper and scratched the desk below.

'Vilayn? It's Ethysil. I really want to talk to you. May I come in?'

'Fuck off.'

'I'm going to take that as a yes. I think you'll want to hear this.'

[therunawayscamp]

[Happy anniversary, Vilayn and Hazil! Have some crappy mistletoe doodles of Vilayn and his love interests.]

all right there Scroogethar

PS. Yes, I do regret giving Vilayn those arm band things.

Hazil is officially Too Small. I have no idea whether the Yellow Pages joke is a thing outside the UK, but if not, here you go [x].

@hoistingcolours‘s Willa, appearing here with my apologies for my inability to draw.

[therunawayscamp]

tucked into the front of a handscrawled manuscript.

When Hazil first suggested to me that I should write, record our voyages for him and Casethar to read, I laughed. I can't write. I can wrestle words down and batter them about until they look like lyrics, and I know fifteen words for... well, for a particularly striking part of the human anatomy, none of which rhyme with “Muatra” by the way, but I can't write.

And here I am with my quill in my hand.

I want to please you, Hazil. I want to do you proud (stop smirking, you know what I mean). I want to, so much it hurts, but I don't know where to start or what to do.

There are two empty glasses on my left and one still with the dregs of sujamma in it, along with the sludge where I dropped my smoking hackle-lo. On my right, stoneflowers. Papery now. Stalks in a blue glass bottle, a label slapped across its front. Property of the East Empire Trading Company. Postmarks. A signature smudged away by petalwater. A pile of notes bound in string, some mine, some Hazil's, some Casethar's.

This is all there is. Flowers and vices on a desk. If I listen hard, I can hear the ocean, and Casethar begging me to open the door now, please.

I will write.

[therunawayscamp]

WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE

Wanted posters are treasured by the crew. Traditionally, to keep the incriminating evidence safe from prying eyes, R’khan stores a collection of the posters they have managed to tear down in the captain’s quarters, and it is a mark of pride to have a larger collection of posters up than anybody else. The Admiral and Casethar are also known to have such likenesses of their beloved hanging somewhere in their homes.

It’s cheaper than commissioning a portrait, ain’t it?

[therunawayscamp]

Fear [Drabble]

There were many types of fear, R'khan had learned. The most obvious was the fear which occurred in an engagement at sea, or a fight on land, the sort of fear which came sharpest and fastest yet was the easiest to master. It could be harnessed, controlled, and redirected outwards, lashed against the enemy like a wild creature tamed and unleashed. Not everyone had that command, but anyone who survived life aboard the Runaway Scamp would soon learn it. Those who didn't now lay somewhere on the bottom of the Sea of Ghosts, shredded by axes and swords after their first boarding action.

There was the fear of the unknown, or rather, the almost unknown, the fear of that which couldn't be seen but was able filled in by the imagination. That was a fear which settled like the fog. A fear echoing in the voice of the leadsman sounding his way through an uncharted reef, throughout the temples begging the Three to be kind, in the wheels of a caravan at the beginning of its journey. That fear could be mastered, too, and turned into excitement, anticipation, speeding forwards.

Fear of the ridiculous. That was another. Take it out of context and it became a story. Embarrassment a source of fame, or infamy, depending upon how generous the bard's mood was at the time. A fear which laughed at itself and made itself companionable, if only it were embraced, with the power to make a failure a triumph.

Many types of fear, all of them controllable, all of them useful, except for the fear which R'khan had only experienced recently and felt no desire to experience again. Quieter, softer, colder was the fear he felt the one and only time he waited with Vilayn and Casethar on a bench outside a healer's hut. He forgot why. Needing to discuss business, perhaps, and finding them waiting for Hazil to finish an appointment. A beautiful day. Morrowind at its best, aglow and defined at the edges by stark, fractal vegetation, smoke in the air, sun spilling over the Veloth Mountains. A beautiful day, and they sat in silence, waiting. R'khan and Vilayn had faced down enemies across Tamriel together and yet this, this time, this beautiful day, was the first time R'khan felt a fear he could not master.

Hazil left the hut grumbling about his headache and the healer's cold hands, and Vilayn sprang into life. He was full of lies about their exploits during the wait, the lady who hadn't arrived nor attempted to sell them handfuls of dirt as a souvenir, the Argonian he hadn't ended up in a fistfight with, the argument he and Casethar hadn't been having about which was worse, dreughs or slaughterfish, and Hazil listened to them all with eyes which saw straight through them.

R'khan let them go. Whatever business he had been so impatient to discuss before was forgotten. He sat on the bench and let the beautiful day close in around him.

[therunawayscamp]

Cas, Hazil, doesn't it bother you that your husband is a pirate? They aren't known for being nice. Who knows what crimes he's guilty of.

‘Used to be one of them. Committed some of those crimes myself.’

With his explanation out of the way, Casethar carries on with his work on the garden, digging around the ash yams. Hazil pauses a little longer before he shrugs.

‘I guess I have a type.’

[therunawayscamp]

The Right Price

'What about if I kidnapped Barbas and offered him in exchange?'

'My Lord doesn't care all that much for Barbas. I imagine he would be rather glad to lose him for a while, and a mortal lifetime isn't so very long, really, not if you compare it to eternity.'

'What about if I promised him my soul, then gave him the sole from my shoe?'

Her laugh was bubbly, infectious, and utterly infuriating.

'Quite absurd. It might work on one of the lesser Princes, I suppose, but on Lord Vile? How silly!' Another giggle or two spilled over her lips, before she patted his hand. Her fingers sat on top of his, pale and long and so very cold. 'Oh, don't glare at me so. I do like you, Mister Vilayn. You can be awfully funny.'

Mr Vilayn was not nearly as amused as his audience, who watched him from her perch on the table over which her latest projects were crumpled in various states of disarray. The Scamps had taken over the whole upper floor of Candlehearth Hall, having bribed Elda with a splash of jewels from their latest haul and chased out the local Nords with snowballs collected from the streets, and Florencia Aicherius, recognising their particular blend of yells, songs, and colourful insults, had invited herself to their party. Now she was sat on one of the tables with a broken puppet lying in pieces all around her. Silks, felts, cotton, cheap muslin, glass pots of paint and twines of hair threaded each dismembered puppet limb together, like a grotesque tapestry half-completed, and the chaos swirled in on Fria at its centre. She flourished a needle at a dress no bigger than her palm and hummed to herself, flicking the odd glance around the room between stitches, only to stop with a shriek when Vilayn tugged at the thread dangling over her wrist.

'I'm not trying to be funny, I'm trying to be serious,' he said. 'This is important.'

'So is giving me a nice bed to sleep in and somebody to share it with, but you've been horribly unfriendly ever since I got here. After I let you help me build my ship, too.'

'It wasn't a ship, it was a frigate, which the Runaway Scamp isn't by the way, and the way you were doing it the sails would have fallen off as soon as they touched the wind.'

'It was only for a little puppet show. You mustn't make such a terrible fuss about things all the time, or you'll become boring.'

It was one of the worst insults in Fria's repertoire, and ranked highly in Vilayn's, as well. He dropped his forehead onto his fist and kneaded his hair.

'I need to do something,' he groaned. Fria's hand alighted upon his again, disturbingly like a spider drifting down on the end of a cobweb.

'I know you do. I understand, truly I do. But Lord Vile can hardly concern himself with every single mortal who comes along him asking him to cure something or other, or save this person, or kill that person. Why, he's barely even spoken to me! It isn't at all like running a ship, you know. Our affairs seem quite petty to him, I'm sure.'

'You said he'll fulfil anyone's desires, for the right price.'

'Yes, darling, but you aren't offering the right price. The right price means you have to sacrifice something, too, none of these silly games you've come up with. You could agree to let him take something else of equal value from you.'

'What would happen then?'

'He would take Mister Casethar, I imagine.'

Vilayn's grip on the thread tightened so hard it snapped.

'No. Maybe I'll offer him you instead.'

There was a coolness to Fria's eyes behind their deep brown, like the dark water beneath ice, which didn't show very often. It showed now.

'He already has me.'

She fished another spool of thread out of the drifts of materials and went about threading her needle again. Behind them, in the final throes of a drinking contest, Braskan roared an unintelligible challenge at Oran, and someone downstairs thumped the end of a broom pole against the ceiling in an attempt to make them quiet down. Vilayn took a pinch of hackle-lo from his pocket, rolled it up, and leaned sideways to light it on the candle over the fireplace.

'I'll come up with something,' he said. Fria wrinkled her nose and waved away the smoke without turning her head from her work.

'Of course you will, darling. I'm sure I can't wait to hear what it is. In the mean time, pass me that piece of lace, would you? The one next to the red silk. There's a dear.'

[therunawayscamp]

Vilayn’s first serious, long-term relationship ended after a couple of years when his partner, Carrik, called things off between them. They had been living together for a few months, which resulted in Carrik spending more time around the crew, and as a result of this he reached the conclusion that he and Vilayn didn’t have enough in common for a lifelong commitment. Vilayn, who fell in love as abruptly then as he does now and had always been happy with Carrik, was devastated. It took him a long time to get over the experience and he didn’t enter into another serious relationship (well, not a relationship he considered serious, anyway) until he met Casethar.

Once, when he was out to dinner with Casethar and Hazil, they ran into Carrik. They exchanged some awkward pleasantries and carried on with their evening. As strange and uncomfortable as the encounter was, Vilayn was all the more appreciative of his husbands afterwards, as it helped him to realise that as much as Carrik meant to him at the time, what he has now is far, far better.

[This is partly why Vilayn has some anxieties about Willa, even if he doesn’t consciously link the two experiences - he worries that maybe, like himself and Carrik, she just doesn’t know if there’s somebody even better out there.]